Culture Shock

A few months before I left Ireland, I was looking at a certain US college's website, clicking around aimlessly and trying to imagine myself as a student there. I didn't end up applying to this particular college, but the memory of its website has stayed with me because of one particular section that I found absolutely hilarious. Billing itself as a guide for international students on what to expect upon coming to America for the first time, the site warned prospective internationals that "In America, people usually bathe every day" and "When an American says to you 'See you later', they do not usually have a designated time in mind". I showed this to my sister and we had a good laugh. What naifs they expect us to be, I giggled, secure in my knowledge that although American is technically a foreign country, it's not really a foreign country.

Oh, how wrong I was.

I can't pinpoint the exact second of realisation, my "Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas any more" moment (the red squiggly line that has just appeared under my chosen spelling of "realisation" is one of many, though). It could've been when I started to cross the road, unaware that I was walking right into the path of an oncoming UPS truck, because I had checked for traffic in the wrong direction. It could've been when I asked somebody if we were supposed to meet up at half five, only to be met with an uncomprehending stare until I tentatively amended it to "Oops, I mean...five thirty?". It could've been the eternity I spent staring at the shelves of peanut butter in the supermarket, trying to figure out which brand I'd like. Sophie never had such a torturous choice!

It's true that the West is fairly homogenized. When I walk through downtown Boston, many of the clothes shops and fast food outlets are familiar to me from Grafton st.; drunk college students here sing along to the choruses of the same songs as drunk college students at home; the drinking games are mostly the same, with slight deviations. The 'Poster Sale' that sets up camp for a few days on campus seems to be an universal thing. Yet there are innumerable tiny differences that make every outing, every purchase, every meal and every conversation just that little bit disorientating

To stand at the counter of a Dunkin' Donuts, peering desperately at the coins in your palm, trying to figure which ones are dimes and which are quarters, is an exercise in appearing simultaneously touchingly useless and incredibly irritating. I'm constantly apologising for my cluelessness, repeating myself, tempering my apparently incredibly Irish locutions so I'm understood.

It isn't the difference in vocabulary or currency or driving regulations (on a related note: cars can make a right turn even when the pedestrian crossing light is green? What the hell, Massachusetts?) that's the biggest culture shock though; it's people's attitudes. We're all aware of the cliche of insistent friendliness on the part of waiters, checkout girls and bus drivers, but nobody prepared me for the attitude of the students. In a nutshell, students actually study. Bizarre!

The workload is roughly the same as it is back home, the level of difficulty no higher than I'm used to, but it seems like more work because all of it is required. Here, everyone goes to all their classes, having already done the required reading, and - get this - actually contributes. There's none of the typical Irish reticence about speaking up in class; here, students don't only answer the teacher's questions, they formulate questions of their own. The student who sleeps in instead of attending class, who merely skims the reading, who sits at the back of the room and doesn't raise her hand  - she is an anomaly rather than the norm. My To Be Read pile is stacking up beside my bed, while at home I'd be inclined to leave it to catch up during the midterm, here I'm trying my best to stay on top of the game. A system of continual assessment rather than everything riding on one big examination or essay at the end of the semester is tiring at the outset, but less daunting in the long run. It might sound like an overwhelming shift, but it's really do-able; everyone else in the college seems to be taking the work seriously, so it's easy to go along with it and take the work seriously yourself.

Don't worry; it's not all disorientation and frenetic studying. I've been on a boat cruise of Boston harbour, visited Harvard, seen Janelle Monae live in concert (with tickets for LCD Soundsystem this Tuesday!), and explored downtown Boston. I've played frisbee on Boston Common and cultivated a friendly relationship with the employees at our local Dunkin' Donuts. I've spent an evening at the Museum of Fine Arts, wandering around with hundreds of other students, ending up sprawled out on the grass in front of the museum, listening to the DJ inside blast Rihanna and Biggie Smalls and gazing up at the stars - as wonderfully surreal as that sounds. Oh, and you know those red plastic drinking cups we've seen in movies? They're oh-so-real. People are ridiculously friendly; any qualms about the difficulties of making new friends were instantly brushed aside.

My only complaint so far: a bone to pick with RTE - why isn't Fair City available on your iPlayer?!

"I know the cost of stamps now!"

Reading over the lyrics of The Waitresses "No Guilt", it’s ostensibly about the aftermath of a break up. “I’ve learned a lot since you’ve been gone / I’ve done a lot a lot since you’ve been gone” sings Patty Donahue. Girl is owning this break up, we think, bopping along with the funky up-strummed guitar line. No heartache here!

I’ve spent the majority of this summer preparing for my move to Boston. I’m only going for one year, no biggie, but from where I’m sitting it’s the biggest change in my life so far. It’ll be my first time living away from home. It’ll be my first time in the States. It’ll be the first time I've spend an extended period of time away from my family. In the grand scheme of things, 20 is not particularly young to be experiencing these firsts, but we should not judge our lives in accordance to the grand scheme of things - this is my life, and I still sometimes get panicky when I have to make an official phone call. But somehow the phone calls get made, in the end.

I wound up listening to “No Guilt” a lot this summer, especially during all the times I spent on trains and trams and buses going back and forth from the city centre; going to work, to the bank, to the doctor’s office to get a set of injections, to the post office, to the US Embassy, to meetings with the International Study group in my college, back to the doctor’s office when I realised I’d have to get another set of injections. I’ve been to the dentist, the optician, the hairdresser. I returned my library books (almost on time). There was a moment of terror when I didn’t get a place to live on-campus, but I somehow managed to find an apartment in Boston that’s far cheaper and way more personable than the campus accomodation. It would be disinegenous to suggest that I achieved all of this on my own - my parents obviously helped me out with lots of things - and the Waitresses song acknowledges the importance of other people  in our quests to grow up ("My parents said that they'd help me pay for grad school", "I met someone who really met Belushi"). Still; “Holy shit,” I’d think to myself sometimes. “I seem to be succeeding!”

This is nothing to brag about, I realise. This is adult life! But this song is like a mini pep-talk, complete with saxophone solo. You, too, can succeed! I’m prone to hiding away from life, sometimes. I’m quite content to stay in my room, clicking through the same websites, avoiding the important email and the pile of unwashed laundry and the doctor’s appointment. This song reminds me not only that these things might need to be done, but that growing up and living like an responsible adult can be a pleasure rather than a chore (“I feel better when my laundry’s done”). Humor helps, duh (“I told them I don’t even know anybody in Toronto!”) and if we detect a slight hint of desperation in Patty Donahue’s voice by the spoken-word bit at end of the song, a sense that she is trying to convince herself as much as us that she is content, that she is together, that she knows exactly what is going on and has no fear, then all the more vital and true to my life. (“I’m really fine, everything’s great. I’m doing all right. Really. Really, everything’s fine. What? I’m doing all right. I’m doing all right. Everything’s great. Sorry, but I’m fine. That’s it.”) On the surface, "No Guilt" has absolutely nothing to do with my situation, but in the selfish and necessary way we manage twist lyrics of pop songs, appropriating isolated lines and inflections and hopeful little basslines to recontextualise them into the specific fabric of our own lives, I managed to turn it into my own theme tune for the summer.

In just over two weeks, I'm flying from Dublin to Boston. The mangled quote earworming its way around in my head is from Peter Pan: "...will be an awfully big adventure". (Let's ignore the start of the quotation, shall we? It being "To die..."). This blog will be a document of this big adventure, this experiment of how one Irish girl manages to survive in an entirely new city, and a way to stay in touch with some people back home that have the patience to slog through paragraphs of me filtering every new experience through some song or movie or book.

(Cross-posted from my Feelin' Massachusetts tumblr)